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Date: Sun, 09 Feb 1997 15:17:19 -0800
From: Jake Hamby <jehamby@lightside.com>
Organization: Jet Propulsion Laboratory
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Subject: Year 2000 UNIX info (from Sun)
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Here is a list of some known Year 2000 problems with Solaris, courtesy
of the Solaris FAQ (http://www.fwi.uva.nl/pub/solaris/solaris2).  I'm
sure FreeBSD shares a few of these problems, at least in the areas where
both OS's derive from the same source base.  Enjoy!

-- Jake Hamby

A year 2000 project at Sun (http://www.sun.com/y2000/) plans to review
all libraries, unbundled software, and some 3rd party apps in search of
potential year 2000 problems, so that they are resolved well before the
big day. 

Sun-maintained Solaris applications with known year-2000 problems as of
Solaris 2.5.1 include the following; these problems should be fixed in
Solaris 2.6. 

* SCCS files store only the last two digits of the year, so SCCS stops
working after 1999. Fixing this requires coordination with other SCCS
vendors. 

* The Solaris 1 `date' command can't set the clock past 1999. This bug
is partly fixed in Solaris 2 `date', which supports both 2-digit and
4-digit years; however, in Solaris 2 you should use 4-digit years when
setting the date, to avoid some remaining bugs with 2-digit year
handling. 

* The following programs are known to have minor bugs related to using
year-1900 instead of year modulo 100 when generating diagnostics,
temporary file names, and the like: 

atq fsck listen passwd sar timex ufsdump uucico uustat uuxqt xterm 

* The -me, -mm, and -ms troff macro packages all assume that the current
date is before January 1, 2000. 

* `sortbib' mishandles bibliographies containing 2-digit years that span
the year-2000 boundary. 

* `ckdate' rejects years after 1999. 

* Problems have been reported with installing Solaris on machines whose
hardware date is past 1999. 

* The filemgr `find after' and `find before' operations have only
2-digit inputs for years, and mishandle dates after 1999. 

* cm (the calendar manager) mishandles dates after 2000-02-29. 

* In Openstep, NSCalendarDate, NSDate*, Mail, and Prefrence need
enhancements and fixes for years past 1999. 

In addition, user applications that invoke `getdate' and `strptime' on
2-digit years are advised to check their assumptions carefully.